The Apple iPhone is easily the most publicized new mobile device in recent memory. But despite all the discussion about the product, there’s relatively little hard information available to the public on its impact. How is it being used? What effect is it having on customers and on the technology industry?
To help answer those questions, Rubicon Consulting conducted a detailed survey of 460 randomly-selected iPhone users in the US. This report summarizes the findings from the survey, and what they mean for users and other companies.
Tag Archives | Business Strategies
Google’s JotSpot Wiki Reborn As Google Sites
Google Sites offers simple tools for collaborative Web site creation. Thomas Claburn of InformationWeek writes about Google’s plans for Google Sites – an outgrowth of the Google Apps suite. Users get simple, intuitive tools for collaborative Web site creation. It’s based on the wiki technology developed by JotSpot, which Google acquired in October, 2006.
iPhone software roadmap: You’ve got (Exchange) mail?
Fortune’s Philip Elmer de Witt on the genesis of iPhone. Enterprise use coming our way? “Some exciting enterprise features.” Those were the magic words in the e-mail that Apple (AAPL) analysts and journalists received Wednesday from the company”s media events department.
The Heartbeat Model
Much of CEOs I talk with spend a lot of time thinking about ways to drive growth of their business. Perhaps they never even stop thinking about it. And after they work on it a lot, they tend to engage their exec team on the topic. Once that level of discussion has happened, a group of incredibly talented c-suite people have figured out how to “grab” on to what it is they need to do. But the key question remains, how do employees “grab on” to the strategy?
Making Money via Mashups
Dial back a year or two and there were lots of questions about whether mashups supported a viable business model. Concerns centered around: low barriers to entry, copyright issues and the risk of someone else owning the data. While all are legitimate concerns, none seems to have derailed the mashup phenomenon.
So what’s going on? Do developers no longer care about making money? Hardly.
Piracy and Revenue Optimization
A winning business model requires a unified and all-encompassing approach that goes far beyond how monies are collected and products or services are delivered. In an earlier article, I mentioned a long list of functional areas that must align around a winning business model, but neglected to include Legal. How the legal eagles affect business models is critical and deserves an article of its own. That’s right–even the legal team is part of a winning business model.
Better than Free
Kevin Kelly has a thought-provoking post on what adds real value in an Internet-centric world. He likens the Internet to a giant copy machine. If books, music, even ideas, can be freely copied so that they are free, where will value reside. To answer the question, he lays out eight “generatives”–or things that cannot be copied, and thus remain valuable. Read the whole thing.
Amen, Brother
“Don’t envy your competitors; this has done more for hurting AMD than anything Intel could do to us.”
Pricing as a Head Trip
Can prices be set too low for consumers? A recent study by Dr. Antonio Rangel of CalTech says yes. Dr. Rangel observed the brain activity of subjects and found they exhibited more pleasure drinking wines when they thought they cost more. For those of us that study the finer points of pricing, this is a very interesting result. We all know that there is a sense to “you get what you pay for” that acts as a negative factor when evaluating the lowest priced alternatives. What Dr. Rangel has established is that there is more than the fear of getting stuck with an inferior product at work; people actually get more enjoyment from certain products if they think they cost more. The data communicated by the price is working not just at a rational level, but at an emotional level as well. That is, from the brain’s standpoint, these products are objectively better in a post-purchase environment.
What was Ford’s Alan Mulally thinking?
Unless you are selling talking beer openers or donuts, comparing your product to Homer Simpson defies conventional wisdom. When your product is a slow-selling car, your actions are certain to leave people saying, “D’oh!”
Yet, this is exactly what Ford Motor CEO Alan Mulally did recently. He wasn’t subtle, in a public speech he projected an image of Homer over a picture of Ford’s Taurus sedan while being critical of the design and talking up future models as much better. We can be pretty sure that this will not rally sales of the Taurus over the coming months, so has Mulally gone mad or is he actually smart?